CHAPTER 2

SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

The Nature of Self-Esteem

Understanding the self from various perspectives is important because who you are and what you
think of yourself influence many facets of your life, both on and off the job. A particularly important
role is played by self-esteem, the experience of feeling competent to cope with the basic challenges in
life and being worthy of happiness. In more general terms, self-esteem refers to a positive overall
evaluation of oneself. A useful distinction is that our self-concept refers to what we think about
ourselves, whereas self-esteem is what we feel about ourselves. People with positive self-esteem have
a deep-down, inside-the-self feeling of their own worth. Consequently, they develop positive self-
concepts.

The Development of Self-Esteem

Part of understanding the nature of self-esteem is to know how it develops. Self-esteem comes about
from a variety of early life experiences. People who were encouraged to feel good about themselves
and their accomplishments by family members, friends, and teachers are more likely to enjoy high
self-esteem. The basis for a healthy level of self-esteem grows out of a secure attachment to a parent.
Self-esteem later in life can be weak if a parent is inconsistently supportive or lacks empathy and
concern for the child. Self-esteem is enhanced if the parent is emotionally supportive toward the child
even when the child does something wrong, such as spilling a glass of diet soda on a beige carpet.

Childhood experiences that lead to healthy self-esteem include the following:

 Being praised
 Being listened to
 Being spoken to respectfully
 Getting attention and hugs
 Experiencing success in sports or school

In contrast, childhood experiences that lead to low self-esteem include the following:
 Being harshly criticized
 Being yelled at or beaten
 Being ignored, ridiculed, or teased
 Being expected to be “perfect” all the time
 Experiencing failures in sports or school
 Often being given messages that failed experiences (losing a game, getting a poor grade, and
so forth) were failures of one’s whole self

The Consequences of Self-Esteem

Positive Consequences
 Career Success
A major consequence of having high self-esteem is that you have a better chance of attaining career
success. The study in question was known as the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, involving
over 12,000 young men and women. The group was studied over a twenty-five year period beginning
in 1979. The components of core self-evaluation include high self-esteem, self-efficacy (an aspect of
self-confidence described later in this chapter), beliefs in personal control over events, and emotional
stability. Individuals with high core self-evaluations are better motivated, perform better on the job,
tend to hold more challenging jobs, and have higher job satisfaction. Among the many results of the
study were that people with higher core self evaluations performed better in their first jobs.
Furthermore, over time those people with high core self-evaluations increase their career success at a
faster pace than those with below-average core self-evaluations. Over a twenty-five-year span, the
career success they have over others doubles. Success was measured in terms of job satisfaction, pay,
and holding a higher-status position. A practical conclusion to take away from this study is that if you
have a high core self-evaluation, it will pay impressive career dividends.

Another aspect of career success related to the core self-evaluation is profiting from training.
Performing well in training contributes to career success because of workplace emphasis on
continuous learning. Evidence about the link between profiting from training and the core self-
evaluation comes from a study of 638 military personnel who participated in job-required foreign
language training. Training lasted eighteen to twenty-four weeks, depending on the difficulty of the
language. Foreign language proficiency was considered necessary for the jobs of the study
participants. A key finding of the study was that a positive core self-evaluation facilitates success in
acquiring language skills partially because it contributes to the motivation to learn. People with core
high core self-evaluations are more likely to have high job performance when they combine positive
attitudes toward the self with a concern for the welfare of others. (Consistently good job performance
enhances career success.) For example, call-center employees with positive core self-evaluations
tended to perform better when they worried about letting other people down. The call-center work
involved telemarketing to generate funds to support new jobs at a university.

 Organizational Prosperity
The combined effect of workers having high self-esteem helps a company prosper. Self-esteem is a
critical source of competitive advantage in an information society. Companies
gain the edge when, in addition to having an educated workforce, employees have high
self-esteem, as shown by such behaviors as the following:
• Being creative and innovative
• Taking personal responsibility for problems
• Feeling independent (yet still wanting to work cooperatively with others)
• Trusting one’s own capabilities
• Taking the initiative to solve problems

Behaviors such as these help you cope with the challenge of a rapidly changing workplace where
products and ideas become obsolete quickly. Workers with high self-esteem are more likely to be able
to cope with new challenges regularly because they are confident that they can master their
environment.

 Good Mental Health

One of the major consequences of high self-esteem is good mental health. People with high self-
esteem feel good about themselves and have positive outlooks on life. One of the links between good
mental health and self-esteem is that high self-esteem helps prevent many situations from being
stressful. Few negative comments from others are likely to bother you when your self-esteem is high.
A person with low self-esteem might crumble if somebody insulted his or her appearance. If you have
high self-esteem, you might shrug off the insult as simply being the other person’s point of view. If
faced with an everyday setback, such as losing keys, if you have high self-esteem you might think, “I
have so much going for me, why fall apart over this incident?
  Profiting from Negative Feedback
Although people with high self-esteem can readily shrug off undeserved insults, they still profit well
from negative feedback. Because they are secure, they can profit from the developmental
opportunities suggested by negative feedback. Workers with high self-esteem develop and maintain
favorable work attitudes and perform at high levels. These positive consequences take place because
such attitudes and behaviors are consistent with the personal belief that they are competent
individuals. The late Mary Kay Ash, the legendary founder of a beauty products company, put it this
way: “It never occurred to me I couldn’t do it. I always knew that if I worked hard enough, I could.”
Furthermore, research has shown that high-self-esteem individuals value reaching work goals more
than do low-self-esteem individuals.

 Serves as a Guide for Regulating Social Relationships

Another consequence of self-esteem is that you can use it as a guide in regulating social relationships.
According to Mark Leary, self-esteem provides a gauge of performance during social interactions:
“Self-esteem rises and falls, acting as an internal barometer of how well you’re faring, telling you to
fix this problem here, and helping you understand that you don’t have to worry about it there.”
Following this reasoning, fluctuations in self-esteem provide information that is useful in working
your way through social relationships. For example, if you are talking and the person you are talking
to yawns, your self-esteem drops, signaling you to change the topic. When you tell a joke, and people
laugh, your self-esteem climbs rapidly. If we did not feel bad when we bored or offended others or felt
satisfied when we delighted them, we would not be inclined to change course.

Potential Negative Consequences

 Exaggerated levels of self-esteem can lead to narcissism.
Self-esteem can elevate to the level where the individual becomes self-absorbed to the point of having
little concern for others, leading to narcissistic attitudes and behaviors. Narcissism is an extremely
positive view of the self, combined with limited empathy for others. Quite often, extreme narcissism
can hamper success because the narcissist irritates and alienates others in the workplace. A frequent
human relations problem with office narcissists is that they are poor listeners because they attempt to
dominate conversations by talking about themselves. Yet the right amount and type of narcissism can
at times facilitate success because the narcissist appears to be self-confident and charismatic
.
 Envying too many people
A potential negative consequence of low self-esteem is envying too many people. If you perceive that
many individuals have much more of what you want and are more worthwhile than you, you will
suffer from enormous envy. To decrease pangs of envy, it is best to develop realistic standards of
comparison between you and other people in the world. If you want to evaluate your level of career
success, a bad idea would be to compare yourself to a magazine listing of the forty must successful
people under forty who have all amassed millions of dollars. A more realistic approach would be to
track down some of your former classmates on the Internet and see what kind of career success they
have achieved.

Kristin Neff, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, supports the
idea that making social comparisons can lead to problems with self-esteem. She explains that in
American culture, people tend to acquire a sense of self-worth from feeling special. A musician who
compares herself to a musician of less talent will feel superior and will even have a boost in self-
esteem. But if she compares herself to a more talented musician, she will feel a decrease in self-
esteem even if her talent and skills have not diminished.

 Poor romantic relationships when self-esteem is low

Low self-esteem can have negative consequences for romantic relationships because people with self-
doubts consistently underestimate their partners’ feelings for them. People with low self-respect
distance themselves from the relationship—often devaluing their partner—to prepare themselves for
what they think will be an inevitable breakup. John G. Holmes, a psychologist at the University of
Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, says, “If people think negatively about themselves, they think their
partner must think negatively about them—and they’re wrong.”

The Enhancement of Self-Esteem

Improving self-esteem is a lifelong process because self-esteem is related to the success of your
activities and interactions with people. Following are approaches to enhancing self esteem that are
related to how self-esteem develops.

 Attain Legitimate Accomplishments

To emphasize again, accomplishing worthwhile activities is a major contributor to self-esteem in both
children and adults. Self-esteem therefore stems from accomplishment. Giving people large trophies
for mundane accomplishments is unlikely to raise self-esteem. More likely, the person will see
through the transparent attempt to build his or her self esteem and develop negative feelings about the
self. The general-information point of view is the opposite: Accomplishment stems from a boost in
self-esteem.
Another way of framing the attainment of legitimate accomplishments is that to boost your self-
esteem, you must engage in behaviors and make choices that are worthy of esteem.

The people whose opinion matters to you, esteem-worthy behavior would include the following:

 Successfully completing a program of studies

 Occupying a high-status job and staying long enough to accomplish something worthwhile
 Investing time and money in charitable activities
 Taking pride in your physical appearance and condition
 Having a social networking page that is filled with honorable and sensible content

As you have probably observed, all these esteem - worthy accomplishments reflect values about what
is important. For example, a person might have criminals and swindlers in his or her reference group.
Self-esteem for this person based on the acclamation of others would therefore stem from such
activities as defrauding others of money and not paying taxes.
A potential difficulty in assessing whether you have attained a legitimate accomplishment is the
motivation of the person giving you feedback on performance. An extensive analysis of the subject
suggests that managers often give subordinates overly-positive performance reviews because high
performers enhance the self-image of the manager. The preconscious thinking might be “If the
members of my team are all performing well, that means I am a very effective manager.”
Closely related to attaining legitimate accomplishments is to have constructive goals that can make a
difference for others. When a person’s self-esteem is low, helping others can take the attention away
from oneself thereby taking away some of the discomfort associated with low self-esteem. In this
sense, a person’s self-esteem would feel elevated. Jennifer Crocker, a psychology professor at the
University of Michigan, explains that by taking your ego out of the situation—and focusing on
helping others—your self-esteem will gain a legitimate boost.20 An example of a constructive goal
that would be to develop a plan to directly help others is to distribute donated food to families in dire
need.

 Be Aware of Personal Strengths

Another method of improving your self-esteem is to develop an appreciation of your strengths and
accomplishments. Appreciating your strengths and accomplishments requires that you engage in
introspection, the act of looking within oneself. Although introspection may sound easy, it requires
considerable discipline and concentration to actually observe what you are doing. A simple example is
that we are often not even aware of some of our basic habits, such as biting the lip when nervous or
blinking when attempting to answer a difficult question. A good starting point is to list your strengths
and accomplishments on paper. This list is likely to be more impressive than you expected.
The late Leo Buscaglia (aka Dr. Hug) was a major contributor to emphasizing the importance of
people appreciating their strengths to boost their self-esteem. Part of his program for enhancing
human relationships was for people to love others as well as themselves. He wanted people to
understand that they were unique.

 Minimize Settings and Interactions that Detract from Your Feelings of Competence
Most of us have situations in work and personal life that make us feel less than our best. If you can
minimize exposure to those situations, you will have fewer feelings of incompetence. The problem
with feeling incompetent is that it lowers your self-esteem. An office supervisor said she detests
company picnics, most of all because she is forced to play softball. At her own admission, she had
less aptitude for athletics than any able-bodied person she knew. In addition, she felt uncomfortable
with the small-talk characteristic of picnics. To minimize discomfort, the woman attended only those
picnics she thought were absolutely necessary. Instead of playing on the softball team, she
volunteered to be the equipment manager.
A problem with avoiding all situations in which you feel incompetent is that it might prevent you
from acquiring needed skills. Also, it boosts your self-confidence and selfesteem to become
comfortable in a previously uncomfortable situation.

 Talk and Socialize Frequently with People Who

Boost Your Self-Esteem
Psychologist Barbara Ilardie says that the people who can raise your self-esteem are usually those
with high self-esteem themselves. They are the people who give honest feedback because they respect
others and themselves. Such high-self-esteem individuals should not be confused with yes-people
who agree with others simply to be liked. The point is that you typically receive more from strong
people than weak ones. Weak people will flatter you but will not give you the honest feedback you
need to build self-esteem.
A related approach to boosting self-esteem is to create a webpage blog in which you enter positive
comments, still photos, and videos about you. You invite others to respond with positive comments
about you, thereby boosting your good feelings about yourself. A downside here, however, is that
some people respond to warm invitations with negative and hurtful commentary. An underlying
problem here is that many people are quite uninhibited when responding to a social media site. Have
you ever noticed how nasty and uninhibited people can be on the Internet?

 Model the Behavior of People with High Self-Esteem

Observe the way people who are believed to have high self-esteem stand, walk, speak, and act. Even
if you are not feeling so secure inside, you will project a high-self-esteem image if you act assured.
Eugene Raudsepp recommends, “Stand tall, speak clearly and with confidence, shake hands firmly,
look people in the eye and smile frequently. Your self-esteem will increase as you notice encouraging
reactions from others.”23 (Notice here that selfesteem is considered to be about the same idea as self-
confidence.) Choose your models of high self-esteem from people you know personally as well as
celebrities you might watch on television news and interview shows. Observing actors on the large or
small screen is a little less useful because they are guaranteed to be playing a role. Identifying a
teacher or professor as a self-esteem model is widely practiced, as is observing successful family
members and friends.